132 Speakers Announced for the 18th Annual Ambulatory Surgery Center Conference

John Atwater, MD. Dr. Atwater is a spine surgeon at Downstate Illinois Spine Center and McClean County Orthopedics , both in Bloomington, Ill. He treats a wide range of spinal conditions and performs many types of spinal surgery. He currently serves as a medical consultant to several medical device companies. He received his medical degree from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and interned at John Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Kenneth Austin, MD. Dr. Austin is an orthopedic surgeon at Rockland Orthopedics & Sports Medicine in Airmont, N.Y. He received his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine and completed his surgical internship and orthopedic residency at the NYU/Bellevue Medical Center. His expertise includes treating traumatic and sports-related injuries of the upper and lower extremities, and hip and knee replacements.

Scott Benglen. Mr. Benglen is CEO of Via Novus Medical , a healthcare consulting group based in Dillon, Colo. He brings 20 years of financial and operational performance to the healthcare arena, having started his career in aviation as a commercial airline pilot for United Airlines. He has also served as a financial negotiator for United Pilots' Contract 2000 and as a managing partner for Sovereign Capital Partners. Christopher Bishop. Mr. Bishop is a partner and senior vice president of acquisitions and development for Blue Chip Surgical Partners . His responsibilities with Blue Chip include optimizing performance at ASCs within the Blue Chip network as well as acquiring and "turning around" underperforming centers. Prior to joining Blue Chip in 2010, Mr. Bishop was a vice president with ASCOA. Jeff Blankinship. Mr. Blankinship serves as the CEO of Surgical Notes , a company founded in 1998 to address the needs of digital medical records for the ASC and surgical hospital markets. Mr. Blankinship has since created several internet-based companies and is currently a part owner of an international medical software and service company. Prior to founding Surgical Notes, he worked with pain management centers and the home healthcare industry. Robert Boeglin, MD. Dr.

West Virginia Supreme Court Finds - Pennsylvania Nursing Home ...

Last week, I wrote as a Pennsylvania nursing home lawyer about arbitration agreements in nursing homes. This is a hot topic right now, as more and more private homes require patients or their families to sign arbitration agreements as part of their admissions to the home. That was true in the several consolidated cases before the West Virginia Supreme Court in Brown v. Genesis Healthcare Corp. et al , decided June 29. In all three of the cases at hand, patients; family members signed arbitration agreements with nursing homes, and later sought to sue the homes for substandard care after the patients died. Prior to death, all three were admitted to hospitals with conditions including infection, dehydration, pneumonia, malnutrition and untreated pressure sores.

In each case, the nursing homes asked the courts to dismiss their claims and compel arbitration under the contracts. In two of the cases, the plaintiffs appealed from a dismissal; in the third, the trial court asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the Federal Arbitration Act preempted the West Virginia Nursing Home Act. The Supreme Court started by noting that families are generally under a lot of pressure and unable to shop around when choosing a nursing home. The Nursing Home Act prohibits patients and their representatives from waiving their rights to the courts. However, the Supreme Court said, the FAA preempts the state Act because the state Act does not provide "grounds for the revocation of any contract"; it applies specifically to nursing home arbitration contracts.

The court next looked at the plaintiffs' contention that the arbitration clauses should be voided as unconscionable. Here, they had more success. The Supreme Court found the clauses unenforceable because they were contrary to public policy; unconscionable in their presentation to the patients; and unconscionable in their content. The trial courts that found otherwise gave no reasoning for their decisions, the court said, and failed to consider plaintiffs' arguments. Finally, the court held that it did not believe Congress intended the FAA to apply to pre-injury arbitration contracts, and directed trial courts to find the arbitration clause unenforceable.

As a Philadelphia injury lawyer , I am pleased to see this issue being addressed by more and more state high courts. West Virginia rulings do not apply in Pennsylvania, of course, but this ruling touches on federal preemption, which is an issue affecting every U.S. state. Thus, this decision and others like it from other states can provide a guide for our courts when they consider mandatory nursing home arbitration contracts. As the court wrote, nursing home contracts are often signed under stress, and lock patients in to legalities they may not fully understand. By squeezing nursing home patients and their families for this kind of concession, the homes put themselves in a position to allow all kinds of Pennsylvania nursing home abuse without accountability -- and that's bad for society's most vulnerable people.

The Pennsylvania lawyer

... in recognizing that "lawyers are not just men with wives waiting at home. ... Her nursing background, she sa; has helped her understand that human ...

Nursing home litigation, investigation and case preparation

Steven M. Levin, Esq., coauthor of Screening the Nursing Home Case, is the co- founder and senior partner of Levin & Perconti. He has been a trial lawyer ...

Presidential Appointments Improvement Act of 2007

The Civil Division is pursuing such cases against national nursing home chains. To date, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ...

The law & aging manual

The functions of the Pennsylvania attorney, for example, were to include: ... L. Providing Legal Assistance for Nursing Home Ombudsman Projects To carry out ...

Nursing home litigation, pretrial practice and trials

As an attorney, she has practiced health care law, medical malpractice and personal injury law. She has practiced primarily nursing home defense litigation ...